Wednesday, March 23, 2016

THE MOLESKIN CHECKLIST – Jeffrey Scott Holland

Yes,
I had to do a little time traveling to read The
Moleskin Checklist.
It wasn't so bad, though, because my target year was only 3½ years
back, when the book was published. No real culture shock there.

Not
like the jolt it must have been for the psyches of Bill and Ted
flying from 2688 to their new excellent adventure! If you're
confused, imagine what it must have been like for these two goofballs
landing in a college town in what feels like somewhere in the Midwest
nearly seven centuries in the past.

Okay,
maybe I'm hallucinating a tad from a flashback fictional high
recalling some time-traveling movie I think I watched once or thrice
or so about a couple of dope-addled doods named simply Bill and Ted,
which is entirely possible.

Anyways,
carrying this plausibly bogus theme forward, let us say these two
doods ride their magic phone booth once again through the misty
centuries and stumble out in 2012, this time playing a private eye
name Jack and his doofus sidekick, Sappy.

And
this time instead of being what we suspected previously as stoned out
of their gourds they are pickled out of their gourds with booze.
Fortunately for the world around them they are essentially happy
drunks.

Don't
get me wrong now. These googly boogly drinking buddies do in fact
have a legitimate adventure. And while
it might not have been so excellent
an adventure for them as the other one, when they were presumed
dopers—if in fact these are the same doods, which, I should caution
you, they might quite well not be--it was most excellent for me the
reader of the account of it by the star of this
production...**hic**...Jack.

You
see, Jack ordinarily does not get the kind of cases that make good
detective novels. They're the routine stuff most real private
investigators ordinarily do, he points out, like taking pictures of
cheating spouses and running errands for lawyers, mostly.

Speaking
of cheating spouses, by the time this adventure starts, Jack's
beautiful-but-ditzy cheating wife has kicked him out and he is living
in his dinky, dingy private-eye office with nothing but his booze and
his massive record collection. Or maybe he divorced her and left on
his own. It's neither clear nor important--the adventure is, so back
to it we go.

I
can't really tell you about the adventure, though, without giving so
much away you wouldn't need to read the book. But, trust me, it is
a lollapalooza, a word neither Jack nor Sappy uses in the novel (I
don't think) and probably never would use in their entire lives. I
can, however, say this: body parts arrive in the mail, shots are
fired, and four men die, one while masturbating in a college men's
room and one when his (upper) head explodes.

Of
course there is sex.

If
you are leaning toward downloading this book, you might wish to know
what the title refers to. I could tell you, but if you are a fan of
mysteries, as am I, wouldn't you want to solve this little mystery on
your own? I did, and I felt rather satisfied afterward. I still feel
smug that I did, truth be told.

What
do I like best about TheMoleskin
Checklist, you
may ask?
Besides the title, the mystery of which I solved on my own? The
voice. Jack's narration of his circumstances, his life, the world
around him, and his excellent adventure, is the most natural
narration I have read. Ever.

Jack's
voice and language are precisely the ones I use when I'm talking to a
good friend and there is no one around I'm trying to impress. In fact
it's the very voice, with concomitant vocabulary, I'd be mortified to
learn someone I would like to impress might overhear me using.

Jeffrey Scott Holland

It
even worries me a tad that someone I might like to impress might read
this book report and learn that I would ever
use the voice and concomitant vocabulary Jack uses in his narration.

Come
to think of it I respectfully ask that anyone who thinks they might
be someone I might like to impress who reads this book report please
not read The
Moleskin Checklist.
Please?

[Note:
One of the more interesting author self-descriptions I have come
across since the day many lunar phases back when I learned the moon
definitely was not one of France's myriad cheeses: I
am a Kentuckian currently transplanted to the Everglades of Florida,
reporting live from the edge of the swamp. I write peculiar little
books with antiquated pulp-fiction penny-dreadful dime-novel
sensibilities and will continue until forcibly restrained.]